"Results are in: A cleaner webpage design equals more engaged readers"

Since we were just talking about design vs content, i thought this recent study was relevant: http://www.rjionline.org/blog/results-are-cleaner-webpage-design-equals-more-engaged-readers

term paper

As some of you'd already know, my research area revolves around transnational media culture in the era of globalization. For this term paper, I'll look at Western fans' reading and decoding of K-pop by conducting online ethnography and emplying several thoretical concepts from globalization paradigm. I'll look at how this contraflow of media culture challenges hegemony drvien by Western imperialism, and how it relates to racial/ethnic/gender identity.
While doing online ethnographic work, I found this funny video on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/sYgYNNBFBjU

Audience Psychology

Queen of social science

Assumption: People are ______.

A few theories related to audience --


Mere exposure:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEsC4gDkk-E

Facial feedback: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR9lTqrkTYw
http://www.workplacehealthcare.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/pencil-happy.jpg

The Penny Gap: The chocolate experiment by Dan Ariely

Pricing and the perception of quality: The wine and energy drink experiments

Physical touch and the perception of quality


Pricing for physical, online, and hybrid products

Paywalls and Revenues

Pew's fact sheet suggests that in 2014 The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal had a similar number of users who paid for access to the websites (more than 700,000). The Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times also had a similar number of such users (around 60,000).  However, I am interested in examining the relationship between the type of paywall – metered or hard – and the growth in digital subscribes. The New York Times, for example, uses a metered paywall that allows online visitors to view a limited number of stories for free before requiring a subscription. In the first quarter of 2015 the outlet added around 33,000 net digital subscribers. Circulation revenue from digital-only subscription was 46.1 million – an increase of 14.4% from the first quarter of 2014. While this revenue accounts for about 20% of the total circulation revenue, it allows The New York Times to earn more revenue from paid circulation than from advertising. The newspaper has tried to improve in engaging users to the point where they are willing to pay – for example, by analyzing the last pages that users visited before signing up for a subscription. I have not seen similar data about The Wall Street Journal and other newspapers that use a hard paywall, but I am curious to see whether and how the number of their digital subscribers has grown, and look at their revenue from digital only subscriptions.

Free....dom

 Anderson and Ariely (I'll cite him like JC) both make great points of how "free" goods and services do wonders to our psyches. Ariely conducts a number of informal tests in his book Predictably Irrational, showing that peoples' tastes change dramatically when products go from free to $.01. An actual price becomes a barrier to purchasing that good. I think the increasing adoption of subscription services challenges this idea. Once people purchase a Netflix or Hulu subscription, they'll often put these subscription services on auto-pay. I wonder how much we begin assuming, over time, that the content we're getting from these services is effectively free. The value proposition is far greater than a cable subscription, at about $10 for thousands of shows and films. It's the cost of a single meal at Chipotle. I don't use Netflix nearly as much as most people I know, but I view it as a public utility rather than something I pay for. I wonder if "cheap" could start feeling more like "free?"


I used to agree with Clay Shirky's idea that we should give our content away for free in the short term in order to build a a fanbase. However, I think we (scholars, and well all of society), need to take a much closer look at the actual benefits to society of all of us creating more content. Sure, if I was to produce a tutorial video series, it could benefit Hyeri JUNG, but am I also creating a treasure trove of data for advertisers to learn more about me? And in a sense, give them more opportunities to target me, and take my disposable income with purchases I perhaps do not need? Also, I think we need to be weary of the fact that, much of the power we as consumer-producers have to distribute our free content rests in the hands of a few large corporations. I am not saying everything is inherently bad or good, but free comes with a lot of considerations. I think society needs to better understand how much free stuff takes away from our freedom.

The psychology of digital media audiences—willingness to pay

The Psychology of Free by Anderson (2009) gave an interesting perspective on free subscription. I had subconsciously thought about this but never in such ways as the penny gap and the cost of zero cost. It makes logical sense to think that a source that has always been free remain unaffected if it continues to remain free to consumers. However,  that paid content is devalued and discredited when it becomes free also makes logical sense. Some equate money with more credibility, higher quality, more information, etc. However, if the same content becomes available for free, its consumers may question whether or not it will have the same amount of credibility, quality and information as it did previously when it was paid. This made perfect sense to me. However, this paper was published in 2009. I wonder if this will still be true today in 2015.

In 2015, I believe Dan Ariely's version of "free" is true as was described in Predictably Irrational. He says "zero is an emotional hot button - a source of irrational excitement." Free does not speak to price/quality as it did previously but rather removes risk and we "forget about the downside." In this case, I think the penny gap works to rationalize consumers preference for free things over paid. Now, we see more free content change from free to paid which is disgruntling to a lot of consumers. Some consumers only look for free content and disregard any paid source because the quality of information is thought to be similar if not the same. Paid content is often called a premium now: the free version gives you everything you need but paid accounts give you more options. Therefore, finding anything for free is exciting and preferred.

"Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive … That tension will not go away." (Anderson 2008)

I've paid a lot of attention over the last several years to the model of online news, hoping that a clear leader in monetization would emerge in the same way that the iTunes store brought change in how most obtained their digital music. The chapter slightly depressed me because it started out strong by comparing the two newspapers but then failed to really address how the rest of the chapter could apply to news. Other than implying "if you started free you're good. if you didn't start free, sucks to be you." The author did a lot to talk about the gap between free and charging ANYthing, which i found very interesting. I never thought of the Penny Gap that way before, and how even a financial commitment of $0.01 is enough to change someone's mindset.

Comparing the chapter to the paywall data, it appears as if most people are still willing to "pay themselves less than minimum wage" to find their content elsewhere. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal have a M-F average circulation of more than 2 million yet only ~700,000 behind the  paywall. I'd love to see a comparison of how many metered clicks the NY Times gets versus paid clicks. What's the falloff after the 10 free monthly views are reached? Do people pay or do they just open it in another browser or in an incognito browser to trick the metering code? 

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In a funny turn, i just opened an email and this ad was at the bottom: